Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Ribbentrop was in a rage at the ‘ungrateful coward Franco’ when he flew the next day to Bordeaux, en route to the meeting with Pétain.²⁷⁷ At Florence a few days later, Hitler told Mussolini that he ‘would prefer to have three or four teeth taken out’ than go through another nine hours’ discussion with Franco — ‘a brave spirit’, he said, but not cut out to be a politician or organizer.²⁷⁸ More privately, he raged about ‘Jesuit swine’ and ‘misplaced Spanish pride’.²⁷⁹

The discussions with Pétain and Laval in Montoire on 24 October were no more fruitful. After the opening diplomatic niceties, Hitler, as he had done with Franco, underlined German military strength, the weakness of Britain’s position, and his keenness to bring the war to an early end. He sought France’s cooperation in the ‘community’ of countries he was in the process of organizing against Britain. The aged leader of Vichy France was non-committal and unspecific. He assured Hitler that everything would be done to sustain the security of French colonial territories in Africa (following the attempt on Dakar). He could confirm the principle of French collaboration with Germany, which Laval had agreed at his meeting with Hitler two days earlier, but could not enter into detail and needed to consult his government before undertaking a binding arrangement. Laval added that Pétain would need to summon the National Assembly — something he would be loath to do — before any declaration of war on Britain. Both Pétain and Laval hinted that the extent of French cooperation hinged on generous treatment by Germany and the acquisition of colonial territory after a final peace. Hitler had offered Pétain nothing specific. He had in return received no precise assurances of active French support, either in the fight against Britain or in steps to regain the territory lost in French Equatorial Africa to the ‘Free French’ of de Gaulle, allied with Britain.²⁸⁰ The outcome was therefore inconsequential.²⁸¹

Hitler professed himself content at the end of the meeting, and afterwards said he had been impressed by Pétain.²⁸² But coming on top of the strained discussion with Franco, and the greater significance thus falling on France’s role in the Mediterranean, it was not surprising that Hitler and Ribbentrop travelled back to Germany with a sense of disappointment at the hesitancy of the French.²⁸³ It was a slow journey, during which Hitler, dispirited and convinced that his initial instincts had been right, told Keitel and Jodl that he wanted to move against Russia during the summer of 1941.²⁸⁴

On crossing the German border Hitler received news that did nothing to improve his mood. He was informed that the Italians were about to invade Greece. He was furious at the stupidity of such a military action to take place in the autumn rains and winter snows of the Balkan hills.²⁸⁵

However, during the meeting of the two dictators and their foreign ministers in Florence on 28 October — essentially a report on the negotiations with Franco and Pétain — Hitler contained his feelings about the Italian Greek adventure, and the meeting passed in harmony.²⁸⁶ Hitler spoke of the mutual distrust between himself and Stalin. However, he said, Molotov would shortly be coming to Berlin. (Ribbentrop had earlier that month persuaded Hitler to invite the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs for talks.) It was his intention, he added, to steer Russian energies towards India. This remarkable idea was Ribbentrop’s — part of his scheme to establish spheres of influence for Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia (the powers forming his intended European-Asiatic Bloc to ‘stretch from Japan to Spain’).²⁸⁷ It was an idea with a very short lifetime.

Briefing his military leaders in early November on his negotiations with Franco and Pétain, Hitler had referred to Russia as ‘the entire problem of Europe’ and said ‘everything must be done to be ready for the great showdown’. But the meeting with his top brass showed that decisions on the prosecution of the war, whether it should be in the east or the west, were still open. Hitler had seemed to his army adjutant Major Engel, attending the meeting, ‘visibly depressed’, conveying the ‘impression that at the moment he does not know how things should proceed’.²⁸⁸ Molotov’s visit in all probability finally convinced Hitler that the only way forward left to him was the one which he had, since the summer, come to favour on strategic grounds, and to which he was in any case ideologically inclined: an attack on the Soviet Union.